This is powerful—and the creator knows it doesn’t even capture the full scope. You could trace this lineage all the way back to Emmett Till. I do wish Philando Castile were included—killed in Minnesota for legally carrying a handgun and calmly saying so—because his death proves there is no “right” way to survive these encounters.

The larger point is unmistakable: these killings were never isolated. They have always been connected, and they’ve been happening in plain sight the entire time—again, back to Emmett Till, and before that, back to the plantation.

We have no real accounting of how many enslaved people were murdered—through medical experimentation, torture, or simply killed the way one might kill a horse or a dog. There are no records that tell the full story. The absence is part of the violence.

This country has a history it has repeatedly refused to see. Not because the evidence isn’t there, but because looking would require reckoning.